Why do we use technology?

Disappointingly, but not wholly unexpectedly, England’s football team were knocked out of the 2010 World Cup by Germany at the weekend. Despite being beaten by a margin of three goals, loyal fans nevertheless bemoaned the fact that the referee made an erroneous decision by failing to notice that the ball had crossed Germany’s goal line.
Of course, the cries once again went up for some kind of goal line technology at top-level football matches to make sure such a state of affairs never happens again.

But that misses the point.

We don’t watch football matches for clinical, emotion-free decisions. We watch football matches as they’re (often) passionate, emotion-charged affairs. We watch them – not to get overly-philosophical – as it reaffirms what it means to be human and brings us together. Technology is not always the answer.

Think of all of the times when someone has proposed to you that technology is the solution. Do they even understand the question? Perhaps you should seek to clarify that first. :-p

3 Comments

stuartridout

I agree to some degree but if you choose the no-technology route then you should have no technology! What we have here is a stadium full of tech and a ref can make a decision only to have it disproved seconds later when a replay is shown on the big screen but he is then powerless to rectify that error.